And nobody knows how it got there.

A dead humpback whale has been discovered in the middle of the Amazon jungle.

The large mammal was discovered in the jungle undergrowth on the island of Marajo, which is situated at the mouth of the Amazon River.

Wildlife experts are baffled by the find. Scientists presume the 10-tonne creature was hurled onshore during a storm.

However, they don’t understand how it came so far inland or why it was swimming off the coast in the first place.

The Independent report that state officials only found the 11m-long whale after following birds of prey which were scavenging on its carcass.

Marine specialists from a conservation group based on Marajo, are part of the team examining the whale. The mammal is thought to have died several days before it was found.

“We’re guessing that the creature was floating close to the shore and the tide, which has been pretty considerable over the past few days, picked it up and threw it inland, into the mangrove”, said Renata Emin, the institute’s project leader.

“We are baffled as to what a humpback whale is doing on the north coast of Brazil during February because this is a very unusual occurrence” he added.

He said they believe the whale is a calf which got separated from its mother during migration.

They plan to study the body a little further. After that, the skeleton of the humpback will be preserved and sent to a natural history museum in Belem.